life, the universe, and everything (although not always in that order)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Once more unto the breach

My company uses RSA SecurID two-factor authentication with Cisco VPN products to allow remote login into our corporate network. Because of the sensitive nature of our work, we've been keenly aware of last March's "sophisticated attack that resulted in the theft of secrets related to its [RSA] SecurID two-factor authentication product." According to a press release from RSA:

Coviello said that the company was confident that the stolen information wouldn't enable a successful attack on any SecurID customers, but that it could be used to "reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack." RSA is talking to customers about possible attack scenarios and helping them to "strengthen their SecurID implementations," Coviello wrote.

We did perform some actions to "stengthen" our SecurID setup, but better to be safe than sorry, so we're replacing all our SecurID tokens. All of them.

Technical

I photographed this with the E-P2 and the M.Zuiko 9-18mm in a quick-and-dirty fashion. I then attempted to do a little down scaling of the JPEG's size with Rawtherapee before uploading to Flickr. I tried twice, and both times Rawtherapee crashed with a segmentation violation (SIGSEGV/signal 11). From what little the automatic bug reporting tool in Fedora could tell me, it appears to be happening in a supporting library devoted to lists; somebody is either dereferencing a null pointer or a stale pointer while manipulating a list of objects. Finally I uploaded the JPEG directly off the camera. I'm trying to reach a point in my process already reached by Matthew Robertson where your photos go straight from camera to cloud. I'm no where near as efficient as Matthew, but I'm slowly getting a lot more streamlined. I just tried the Linux tools to see what might happen.

Cultural

The title comes from Shakespeare's Henry V, Act III, and Henry V's speech at Agincourt, where I mash 16th century historical theater with 21st century security theater.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;Or close the wall up with our English dead.In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility:But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger;Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;Let pry through the portage of the headLike the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm itAs fearfully as doth a galled rockO'erhang and jutty his confounded base,Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,Hold hard the breath and bend up every spiritTo his full height. On, on, you noblest English.Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,Have in these parts from morn till even foughtAnd sheathed their swords for lack of argument:Dishonour not your mothers; now attestThat those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.Be copy now to men of grosser blood,And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,Whose limbs were made in England, show us hereThe mettle of your pasture; let us swearThat you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;For there is none of you so mean and base,That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:Follow your spirit, and upon this chargeCry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'